Relationship between early and later developing numerical abilities

作为成年人，数字对于我们所做的几乎每一件事都很重要。我们的量化思维从何而来？布兰农博士和其他人之前的研究表明，非常小的婴儿可以单凭数字来辨别一组物品。尽管现在有大量证据表明，婴儿具有感知数字差异的基本能力，但我们还不清楚这些能力是否或如何与后来的数学认知有关。这个项目的重点是询问在人类发展早期出现的非语言数字能力是否可以作为学习数学的基础。为了回答这些问题，布兰农博士和她的研究团队开发了一种新的程序，可以量化单个婴儿看到数字差异的能力。这一过程包括向婴儿展示两个数字图像流。其中一个流的特点是每个图像中的点的数量都是恒定的；但是，这些图像在点的位置和大小上有所不同。另一张图片的特点是两个不同的数值交替出现。婴儿更喜欢看不断变化的数字流，他们对变化的流的偏好程度取决于该流中两个值之间的比例。该项目将使用纵向设计来考察6个月大婴儿的数字辨别能力与3.5岁和4.5岁的相同儿童的数字辨别能力和数学概念之间的关系。在新的数字变化检测任务中，将首先对6个月大的婴儿进行大样本测试。这些婴儿将在9个月和18个月时接受各种非语言数字辨别任务的测试，然后在3.5岁和4.5岁时接受语言和非语言数字辨别任务的测试。该项目将为理解婴儿期和儿童后期的数字能力之间的关系提供基础。在婴儿期基本的数字能力和后来发展的数学能力之间建立联系，可以为发现早期的数学困难和制定解决这些困难的干预措施提供重要的途径。

Number is important for almost everything we do as adult humans. Where does our quantitative mind originate? Previous research by Dr. Brannon and others has shown that very young infants can discriminate sets of items based on number alone. Despite the abundance of evidence that now demonstrates that infants have rudimentary abilities to perceive numerical differences, we do not yet understand whether or how these capacities relate to later mathematical cognition. The focus of this project is to ask whether nonverbal numerical abilities that emerge early in human development serve as a foundation for learning mathematics. To answer these questions Dr. Brannon and her research team have developed a new procedure that quantifies an individual infant's ability to see numerical differences. The procedure involves presenting babies with two streams of numerical images. One of the streams features a constant number of dots in each image; however, the images vary in the location and size of the dots. The other image features two different numerical values that alternate. Infants prefer to look at the changing numerical stream and the magnitude of their preference for the changing stream depends on the ratio between the two values in that stream. The project will use a longitudinal design to look at the relationship between numerical discrimination abilities in 6-month-old babies and later numerical discrimination and math concepts in the same children at 3.5 and 4.5 years of age. A large sample of 6-month-old infants will first be tested in the new numerical change detection task. The same infants will be tested in a variety of nonverbal numerical discrimination tasks at 9 and 18 months and then in both verbal and nonverbal numerical tasks at 3.5 and 4.5 years of age. This project will provide a foundation for understanding the relationship between numerical abilities in infancy and later childhood. Establishing a link between rudimentary numerical abilities in infancy and later developing mathematical abilities could provide an important avenue for identifying early mathematics difficulties and developing interventions to address these difficulties.